Book description
This edition does not include illustrations.
A magisterial narrative account of the creation and consumption of all
forms of 'culture' across the European continent over the last two
hundred years.
This compelling, wide-ranging and hugely ambitious book offers, for the
first time ever, an integrated history of the culture produced and
consumed by Europeans since 1800, and follows its transformation from an
elite activity to a mass market - from lending libraries to the
internet, from the first public concerts to music downloads.
In itself a cultural tour de force, the book covers high and low
culture, readers and writers, audiences and prima donnas, Rossini and
hip hop, Verdi and the Beatles, Zola and Tintin, Walter Scott and Jules
Verne, the serialised novel of the 19th-century as well as 'Dallas' and
'Coronation Street'. Included in its vast scope are fairytales,
bestsellers, crime and sci-fi, non-fiction, magazines, newspapers, comic
strips, plays, opera, musicals, pop music, sound recording, films,
documentaries, radio and television.
A continent-wide survey, this majestic work includes discussions of rock
music under communism, Polish and Danish bestsellers, French melodramas
and German cabarets, fascist and Soviet cinema. It examines the ways
culture travels - how it is produced, transformed, adapted, absorbed,
sold and consumed; how it is shaped by audiences and politics, and
controlled by laws and conventional morality; why some countries excel
in particular genres. It examines the anxiety and attraction felt by
Europeans towards American culture, and asks to what extent European
culture has become Americanised.
Stylishly written, devoid of jargon, this is global non-fiction
narrative at its best. 'Unique and encyclopedic…a monument to
streetwise and cosmopolitan scholarship.' Guardian
'An absorbing, illuminating and enjoyable book…anyone with an interest
in the development of culture…will find it interesting, informative and
surprisingly entertaining. It is also packed with good sense.' Daily Telegraph
'Never less than penetrating in his comments…this…book shows how British
historians such as Sassoon…now occupy the commanding heights of
comparative European history and analysis.' Financial Times
'Donald Sassoon has to be congratulated for his immense ambition…it is
full of dense detail and he has mastered a considerable body of
evidence.' Spectator Donald Sassoon was born in Cairo and was educated
in Paris, Milan, London and the USA. He is the author of a number of
books on Italian history and of 'One Hundred Years of Socialism' (winner
of the Deutscher Prize 1996), 'Mona Lisa' and 'The Culture of the
Europeans'. His books have been translated into fourteen languages. He
is currently Professor of Comparative European History at Queen Mary,
University of London.
